


equal partners in a mystery

by knopecommaleslie



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: A little angsty at first, F/F, Had to upgrade the rating to E, OK a lot angsty, Road Trips, and then..., bc you know...haunted, canon compliant up until Vermont, is apparently my thing, it's going to be a journey, mundane but lovely things, plot-driven porn, there will be sexy times on this journey, there will be softness bc HAVE YOU SEEN THESE TWO, there will likely be smut, we shall see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27813082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knopecommaleslie/pseuds/knopecommaleslie
Summary: When Jamie and Dani leave Bly, they've still got a long way to go before either one can relax into the adventure of the rest of their lives.Or, as originally conceived: What’s the transition like from “we slept together one amazing time, then a ghost got one of us, then we moved across an ocean together” to “we are girlfriend-wives and business owners?”This fills in the considerable gaps between the leaving-in-the-truck scene to the diner scene to the flower shop, and will likely go beyond that. I am immensely enjoying exploring how they navigate making that leap, what they day-to-day evolution is like, and of course, the exact nature and delicious details of their love.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 154
Kudos: 228





	1. solid to the air i breathe, open-eyed and fast asleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: panic attacks

When they leave the grounds of Bly once and for all that sunny day, it’s like Dani crumbles. She’s been holding it together for the kids, for Owen, for Jamie, but once the truck is in motion, bumping over those same roads she travelled not so many weeks before with wonder and hope for a new start, the adrenaline runs out and the exhaustion sets in. She sleeps fitfully against the window, but wakes with a panicked start every time Jamie has to make a turn. Jamie’s running a hand from her shoulder to elbow to palm and back whenever she doesn’t need both to steer, but there’s only so much she can do with her attention divided, and she knows in her bones the thing Dani needs most right now is space between her and whatever the _fuck_ happened at the lake. 

By the time they get to the hotel Henry’s reserved for them in London, Dani is nearly catatonic. Jamie guides her up the ornate golden staircase and to their room on the second floor, then to the edge of one huge, fluffy bed. Dani doesn’t seem to have it in her to speak, so Jamie says, “I’m gonna take off your shoes, OK? I think it’s time for a bit of rest.” Dani doesn’t answer either way, so Jamie watches her face for signs of protest as she kneels in front of her and eases off one white sneaker, then the other. Finding none, she helps Dani out of her denim jacket as well, then tucks her into bed.

Jamie is profoundly worried about Dani, but is at a loss for what else to do. Her smaller, meaner self is also feeling a bit bitter, if she’s honest – here Henry has put them up in by far the nicest hotel she’s ever dared set foot in, and what she wouldn’t give to be here with the Dani of a week ago – what they would do to those crisp white bedsheets. But things have happened that are darker and more mysterious than she ever imagined possible, and she’s really just trying to hang on moment by moment, for Dani’s sake as well as her own.

-

Dani wakes in a lockjawed panic around 2am. It’s like she’s forgotten how to breathe, how to move, how to do anything but take pained breaths through clenched teeth, moaning in fear. Jamie’s in bed next to her – it just felt right to stay close - and though she too wakes with a start, some part of her knew something like this was coming, and so she acts immediately to try and soothe the panic from Dani’s frantic but frozen face.

“Hey, hey, Poppins. There you are.” She tentatively lays a hand on a stiff shoulder, sees that Dani seems to think she can’t move. “Wiggle your toes. Clench your fists. That’s right, you’re in control.” And Dani is indeed starting to wiggle her toes – Jamie can feel them under the sheet – and clenching her hands shut, open, shut open, over the comforter. And then she’s collapsing into Jamie’s arms, tears streaming, words spluttering off shivering teeth. 

“I’m s-s-so scared, Jamie, I’m so f-fucking scared.”

“I know, Poppins, I know.” Jamie strokes her hair, her back. Heightened emotions are not exactly her strong suit, but she’s doing her best and then some, eyes glued on the stamped metal ceiling tiles as if searching for guidance.

“I just… _she’s_ coming. She’s gonna get me. I was her. She was…she was me. Is me. I should just let…”

“No. No.” Jamie speaks with more conviction now. “Absolutely not. You’re here, you’re you. I mean, just look at you.” She leans her head back theatrically, takes in the sight of dazzlingly-beautiful Dani, even as her perfect jaw is trembling and a bit of snot is trailing out of her nose. “You’re absolutely you, I can tell because you’re about to roll your eyes at me, but you also kind of want to smile.” And she’s right. And she’s brought Dani out of it successfully, for now, though Dani’s ragged breathing tells her she’s barely holding on. 

So Jamie smiles with more confidence than she actually feels and wills her voice to stay steady, and repeats the words like a mantra, like a counter-spell: “You’re here, you’re you, I’m here, I’ve got you, we’re safe.” She repeats it until Dani’s breathing slows, then shallows, until her head is heavy on Jamie’s chest and she’s finally asleep again.

-

They spend the next two weeks while Jamie’s passport is expedited – yet another benefit of having Henry Wingrave in your debt - walking quietly through the neighborhood, sitting on park benches watching small children and pigeons. They seek out good food, or rather, Jamie seeks it out and coaxes Dani to eat.

Jamie knows she needs to just get Dani away from here, out of this goddamned country, back to her own land of foolish optimism and technicolor hope. Jamie's clinging to this idea, ridiculous but no more so than the truth of what’s happened, that setting foot on home soil will heal Dani somehow. Never mind that the very idea of “home” is as nebulous and fraught to Dani as it is to Jamie. Never mind that they’re heading back to where Dani picked up her first haunting at the hands of someone else’s quietly oppressive daydream. Jamie has to hope, has to believe there’s some chance that moving Dani physically will move her mentally as well.

And in some ways, it does. By the time Jamie’s passport comes through and they’re booking plane tickets, Dani is getting out of bed all on her own in the mornings. She’s asking for foods she prefers, remembering old London favorites from the previous spring, rather than just eating despondently what Jamie offers. She’s also started looking at Jamie again in the daylight, rather than through or around or just plain away from her. For long moments, now, Jamie will catch Dani’s eye and Dani will just…pause and look. Her eyes, her entire face is studying Jamie’s like she’s remembering her after a long time apart, and, the stupid, hopeful part of Jamie also notes, like those memories are fond ones.

The nights are still rough, with each bringing at least one episode just like the first one. But humans are infinitely adaptable and incredibly resilient, and and they’re both becoming practiced already, Jamie at administering the verbal antidote, and Dani at accepting it. “Wiggle your toes. Clench your hands. You’re here, you’re you, I’m here, I’ve got you, we’re safe.” Repeat. Repeat. Softer and slower until sleep sees fit to invite Dani in again.

The day before their flight is set to go, Jamie laces her fingers through Dani’s as they head down the hotel hallway – a habit now, borne not out of sensuality so much as the practicality of caring for someone who needs to be lead around much of the time – and to her surprise, Dani squeezes back, pulls Jamie’s hand up and kisses the back of her hand, opening her mouth just enough to place her tongue on the knuckle of her index finger and suck a momentary kiss there. Jamie stops dead in her tracks, not just because this is new, but because it’s old, too: this is a move Dani used on her _that_ night, their only real night the way nights are supposed to go, and in stolen moments next day; a move that, in the way its apparent sweetness belies the heat and lust behind a hot tongue, drove Jamie wild. She lets herself hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading - there will be lots more!  
> Comments make my day and keep me writing :)
> 
> Main title from Indigo Girls - Mystery (1994)  
> Chapter title from Indigo Girls - Secure Yourself (1989)
> 
> Come process with me on tumblr @bly-me


	2. harbor you from the anger, find a refuge from the wrath

When they’re wheels up and winging over the Atlantic, Jamie thinks, _Fuck, I’m not going to be able to do this properly today_. _This_ being caring for Dani, because how can she reassure Dani that she’s safe when she’s absolutely sure that they’re about to smash into the surface of the ocean and die once and for all.

She’s grinding her teeth so hard her jaw hurts and gripping the armrest, eyes shut tightly, trying not to cry or hyperventilate or vomit, when she feels warm breath on her neck, a soft palm across her forearm. She hears a whisper: “Wiggle your toes. Clench your fists.” And a hand wraps around hers, squeezes fingers together. She opens her eyes a crack and looks down to see Dani curled into her, hugging her safe, repeating the words she’s said so many times in the past two weeks: “You’re here, you’re you, I’m here, I’ve got you, we’re safe.”

Jamie lets out a breath it feels like she’s been holding half an hour, surprised to find that her shoulders are already lowering from their place up by her ears.

Dani continues, “I didn’t even think about how this would be your first time on a plane, Jamie, I’m so sorry. I was really scared my first time too, back in college…” She launches into a pretty funny retelling of her own small-town-girl-takes-flight moment, and soon Jamie is laughing along with her, barely even thinking about how terribly _labored_ the plane’s engines sound. It’s then that she realizes that this is the most normal conversation she’s had with Dani since leaving Bly.

She also realizes that Dani is still stroking the top of her hand, still telling her stories in a quiet, breathy voice, head resting on her shoulder. Thank God everyone on the plane had clearly seen how terrified she’d been so they won’t think anything of her travel companion comforting her. She considers faking another wave of anxiety to justify some more of what she now sees is recklessness, but ultimately, self-preservation takes over and she sits up straight, shakes it off, and gently moves their clasped hands to a more discreet location between the seats.

Maybe getting her out of England really will be the key, Jamie thinks, to setting Dani to rights again. And if they’re going to get to hold hands the whole way, maybe it’s even OK that they have another bloody flight to catch once they land. 

\- 

By the time they’re on the curb at LAX hailing a cab, however, Dani has fallen back into a semi-panicked, mostly-silent state. One step at a time, Jamie thinks. And the next step _needs_ to be sleep. Los Angeles is eight hours behind London time, but you could tell Jamie it was any hour of the day at this point and she’d be helpless to believe you. Thankfully, they’ve pre-booked a hotel near the airport, and when they arrive, they both collapse into just one of the two beds in the room, as they’ve been doing for days now.

They sleep for so long – interrupted only once by Dani’s panic – that when they finally wake, Jamie decides that hungry outweighs dirty and navigates them down a gritty, hot sidewalk to a pancake place before even taking time to shower. Her first impressions of America are _bright_ and _loud_ , and this particular outing does nothing to remediate that. The waitress is smiling like a maniac at her every time she stops by their table, and everything is so _sweet_. Still, it’s good to get some food into Dani, and into herself as well, and her inner logical self knows the shell-shock of landing in this new place should come as no surprise to a ragamuffin like her.

When it comes time to pay the bill, however, she’s flummoxed. She distinctly remembers the menu saying that Dani’s pancakes and bacon were $2.50 while the closest thing she could find to a proper fry-up was $3 even. So why is the aggressively-smiling waitress now asking her for $5.88? She’s trying to figure out how to politely dispute this (not usually a problem for straightforward Jamie, but she’s tired and disoriented and _Christ_ , but the pop music in here is loud) when Dani comes to her rescue, plucking the wallet out of her hands and stepping in front of her.

“Thank you so much, that was delicious,” Dani is saying, smiling into the _thaaaat,_ her voice dripping with something not-spontaneous but not entirely fake, either. Dani keeps smiling as she counts out coins, then turns and hands a couple bills to Jamie.

“Thanks?” Jamie says, her eyebrows knitted in confusion.

“For the table, Jamie, go put the tip on the table.” Dani gestures back to the booth where they’d sat, shooing her along on the errand. Jamie complies, but once they’re outside, queries: “Want to tell me why we just paid nearly eight dollars a five-and-a-half dollar breakfast, Poppins?” Dani then launches into a lesson on tax and tipping in the US, and again, she’s halfway through her lecture before Jamie sees it: it’s Dani, really Dani again, clear-eyed and helpful and just a wee bit sassy, and _animated_ – talking with her hands and re-tying her ponytail as she explains the finer points of tipping culture and how the reverse was confusing to her in England as well.

“And why are the goddamned fivepence ones bigger than the tenpence?” Jamie asks, hoping to keep her talking, to keep this delicious, tantalizing normalcy close at hand as long as possible.

-

Day by day, it’s like a dial is being turned so that when Jamie looks at Dani’s eyes, she sees less and less fear and emptiness, more and more curiosity and warmth. The flickers turn to blinks, then half-hours, half-days, and nearly-whole days of what Jamie thinks of as Old Dani. (They’d only known each other a short while in Bly, she knows, but in retrospect, that’s all the time they’ll ever get that falls on the BEFORE side of the major turning point in their lives; so it’s all the AFTER has to compare to.) 

Along with the simple passage of time, the only thing Jamie can identify that connects these bright moments are times when Dani’s helping her in some way – giggling as she explains that a “pint” of beer here is not quite one, actually; hissing at her to _stop talking about needing to pick up fags, Jamie, that’s not a nice word here_ ; adorably trying to describe the different tastes of the approximately 18 sodas available from a self-serve fountain.

And it’s therapy for Jamie, too, this learning how to let someone help her – to _ask_ for someone’s help, in fact, and even half-expect the request to be fulfilled. (She can just hear Tamara’s voice in her head – _Jamie, that’s wonderful, what a healthy path you’re on!_ – and she rolls her eyes internally but also quietly agrees.)

So, Jamie tries to practice it, and is careful to do so in ways that aren’t patronizing to Dani. That happens exactly once, on day two, and though Dani is definitely fully herself when she fires back, _Yeah, Jamie, I ‘think I can go to the ice machine for you,’ are you truly just babysitting me at this point, because that’s on my resume, not yours,_ it’s not a dynamic Jamie ever wants to recreate.

(That was a bad day overall - they’d gone to the beach, because that’s what you do in LA, but it’s too much water, too much rushing, bubbling, sucking water for Dani, and she staggers backward in the sand so quickly that Jamie can’t believe she didn’t anticipate this. So, they scrap the original plan to drive up the California coast and take a sharp turn inland, head over the Sierra Nevadas and into the desert of the southwest.)

No, those sorts of made-up “help me” tasks aren’t the ones that work to heal either of them. Instead, over three more days in LA – as they secure a rental car, a fresh set of maps, and a semblance of a route – Jamie is testing the limits of her own trust, learning to rely on Dani for things she herself really, truly needs addressed – which happen to also be the ones best for bringing Dani back and keeping her anchored.

It’s in Jamie’s cautious reopening of a conversation about aspects of her own past that still need airing out and accepting if she’s going to relax, raised with hopeful but nervous glances at Dani as they’re driving past Arizona cacti. It’s in her honest-to-God inability to estimate how much food to buy at a time when they stop at grocery stores to stock the cooler in the backseat. It’s in her increasingly frequent, soft-spoken requests for Dani to hold her as she falls asleep, to remind her that she’s not alone in this country, in this world.

And each time she asks, Dani answers in kind: She listens, tuned in and nodding, to Jamie’s stories about seeing and accepting herself much younger than Dani ever imagined someone could, and getting burned for it over and over by girls who took advantage and all they boys those girls told. She teasingly guides Jamie through her calculation of how many sandwiches one loaf of white bread and a jar of peanut butter can be reasonably expected to produce, suggests they might also want some vegetables at some point.

And every single night now, Dani takes the first turn in the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, lets down her hair, and takes her place on the left-hand side of whatever scratchy-sheeted, thin-blanketed bed they’re in for the evening. Once Jamie clicks off the light and joins her, Dani scoots in close, rests an arm across Jamie’s wiry frame, and takes a few deep breaths against her back, and Jamie responds by breathing along in tandem. It’s unclear, and doesn’t matter one bit, who this ritual is intended to help more – it brings them both peace at the end of each day, reassurance in the form of a solid, warm presence that doesn’t need words to say _you’re here, you’re you, I’m here, I’ve got you, we’re safe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading - more is in the works!  
> And, I think I've got Dani almost healthy enough to start working toward that M rating ;)
> 
> Comments make my day and keep me writing. 
> 
> Main title from Indigo Girls - Mystery (1994)  
> Chapter title from Indigo Girls - Strange Fire (1989)  
> (Yes, all the titles will be Indigo Girls lyrics. Because I'm old.  
> AND I like imagining these two picking up these albums and just reveling in them.) 
> 
> Come process with me on tumblr @bly-me


	3. love while these moments are still called today

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not me, making chapter 3 nearly twice as long as chapters 1 and 2 combined...Seriously, this one is a lot. Probably should be two chapters, but I don't want to keep it from you. 
> 
> One nerd note: My dedication to over-the-top research led me to discover the “humming dunes” of Death Valley in writing this chapter. If you’re curious about this phenomenon, a decent video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jyFY-9_wSE – skip to about the 1 minute mark.

Dani doesn’t clearly remember the first three weeks after she and Jamie had left Bly Manor. It’s not like she was blacked out the whole time – she has flashes of recollection, and mostly she has _feelings,_ sensory imprints of what that time was like. She remembers the constant tightness in her chest, the stiffness in her neck and jaw. She remembers the heavy tiredness that dragged her down into thick sleep at odd hours. She remembers the sore tenderness of the fingerprints around her throat that took ten days to fade. She remembers most vividly the rushing, roaring, empty-fullness of otherworldly not-quite-a-scream sound that filled her ears day and night.

But alongside all this, running over and through and around those half-formed icy terrors like warm water, she remembers other things. The warmth of Jamie’s hand on her elbow, the subtle tug of being lead with care through a doorway. The rustle and light pressure of Jamie smoothing hotel bedsheets and comforter over her always-cold body. Above all, she remembers, and clings to like a lifeline, Jamie’s voice, reaching her through the loudest, darkest, coldest moments of horror: “You’re here, you’re you, I’m here, I’ve got you, we’re safe.”

A handful of other memories, full five-sense memories of moments and conversations and meals eaten and sights seen, exist like pages in a book for her – complete in their isolation, but with no connection to a before or after: no clear recollection of how ended up seated at that particular cafe table or what steps she’d taken to settle into the passenger seat of that red car, even where the red car had come from exactly. But she’d known she was safe, because she was with Jamie, had felt in her bones that when she drifted – because that’s what the in-between times often felt like – she was never totally unmoored; she was being shepherded, being cared for.

The first full day that stands out in bright relief is one spent travelling across Death Valley National Park. She’d never been in the desert before, neither had Jamie, so they’d both been awestruck by the vastness, the stillness, the quietly shimmering heat.

“I had no idea there were so many shades of brown and beige in the world,” Dani had said, scanning her eyes across the horizon. “Yeah, or that a place with so much…sand…could still be so beautiful,” Jamie had added.

They’d stopped to eat a picnic lunch, pulled just off the road, virtually empty of other travelers breaking the silence of the desert. They’d spread a blanket on the ground on the shady side of the rental car, leaned against the hot, dusty metal doors and gazed around like they’d landed on another planet. After finishing their sandwiches and downing a good bit of water, they decided to explore just a bit, picking their way around desert scrub and rocks, heading vaguely in the direction of a nearby dune but really just fully reveling in the feeling of being in the true middle of nowhere.

Dani had been just about to comment on how different the uneven, stony, brush-sprouting ground was from how she’d always pictured the desert - like in a cartoon, flat and totally empty – when all of a sudden, her vision blurred. For a moment, she thought she was heading into another drift, and waited with resignation for the deep chill to make her shiver in the 110-degree desert, for the sound of muffled watery wails to fill her ears and drown out the quiet she’d been enjoying. And a sound had filled her ears, but it wasn’t what she’d braced for – it was a rush, yes, but a dry, peppery rush, and she’d realized its source had not been inside her head but outside – they were being overtaken by a sandstorm.

Jamie had clocked what was happening at the same time, and in two steps apiece they reached each other, but with no clear plan as to what was next. The car was too far away to run for, and totally obscured by flying grit besides. Gripping each others’ arms and shoulders, Jamie pulled Dani down to a crouch to shelter next to a larger boulder. Even with the buffer, the wind whipped their hair around their faces, brown and blonde strands tangling together and filling with sand that wouldn’t fully vacate Jamie’s curls for days.

They screwed their eyes shut against the onslaught, heads ducked together, holding only to each other and hearing only the roar of the wind for several long minutes. When the sting of sand on their cheeks had died down, they opened their eyes to find that, somehow, nothing in the landscape had shifted. Dani had expected the plants around them to be uprooted, the scant scrubby trees to be knocked askew, but no, the storm had come, the storm had gone, and everything was still here.

But then, something _had_ happened. A low vibration reached their feet and their ears simultaneously, then grew into a whine, then a low moan, then a deep rumbling. With her fingers still wrapped around Jamie’s forearms, Dani rose to follow the source of the sound with her eyes. She’d expected to spot a low-flying jet cresting the horizon, but instead saw that something was, in fact, moving in response to the storm: the surface of the dune ahead was rippling, a great slide of sand seemingly unleashing the eerie howl.

Jamie stood as well, and they locked eyes as their bodies were filled with the murmuration of an impossible thing, a miraculous thing, and Dani felt her very bones, her teeth, vibrating along with the desert, along with Jamie’s bones and teeth and skin beneath her fingers. 

It should have been scary. The Dani of six months ago would have proclaimed the sound “Creepy!” and tried to laugh off the way the deep rumble stirred in her something deeply internal, something ancient and unknowable. But Dani that day just breathed in deeply, letting the miniscule drumming of millions of grains of sand sing to her body, telling it a story about movement, about fullness, about rushing and drowning and surrender that was in fundamental opposition to the one she’d already been forced to hear for too many hours of too many days.

Looking back, Dani’s still not sure which way the causality of that day goes – was she just lucky as hell that her first solid day was one of the most awesome of her life, or was it the storm and the land the dune that shook her vision clear, pushed her at last over the threshold and decidedly into the land of the living? Or perhaps it was both more and less than all of that, and the key had been the first experience of all-consuming _wonder_ that she and Jamie had shared since the long hours spent over one night in a too-large blue bedroom.

Either way, that day marks a turning point in Dani’s long, slow, painful swim out of the fog and into the light. It feels like a miracle, and for weeks she waits, expecting to lose time and feeling and herself again, but the days that follow that one are almost entirely clear, both in the moment and in her memories.

A few sun-soaked days later, they’re sitting in a booth in a little lunch spot in Santa Fe, sorting through purchases made during a morning of resupplying along the quaint shopping streets. Dani’s folding the new-to-them clothing they’ve found at local thrift shops – just because they have a deep well of savings all of a sudden from their combined “severance” packages from Henry doesn’t mean they can afford to be frivolous, and neither would feel comfortable doing so anyway.

Having finally conceded that late summer in the southwestern US is incomparable in terms of wardrobe to the same in the London countryside, they’ve invested in some cooler, lighter clothes. Dani has acquired chino shorts in several bright colors, two knee-length flowy skirts, and a few more short-sleeved tops, having had to resort to borrowing Jamie’s band tees more than once (while she loves wearing Jamie’s clothes – it makes her feel safe and held all day long – it creates problems when they’re running up against laundry days too frequently).

Jamie, for her part, has chosen two scruffy pairs of jeans that she’s now doggedly chopping into cutoffs using a pair of scissors borrowed from the restaurant cashier’s stand. They’ve been traveling long enough that Dani no longer blushes and hides her face when they need to make such an odd request; she just chalks it up to part of the adventure, a necessary quirk of life on the road, and watches as Jamie – to whom it never occurs to be embarrassed about borrowing something she knows a shopkeeper has handy – asks for what’s needed and settles in to get to work.

For not the first time, Dani wonders how much Jamie can feel her watching, taking her in with a mix of admiration at Jamie’s capability – and, if she’s honest, at just how very pretty Jamie is – and pride – _I’m_ travelling with _her, that one._ She’s felt herself watching Jamie like this more and more as the roar in her head stays quiet, as her eyes feel more certainly under her own control. And of course, Dani enjoys this, but it also worries her. Does _she_ do anything Jamie finds worth watching? Does Jamie feel proud to be traveling with _her_? Probably not, as she’s next to useless at things like changing a flat tire, not to mention the obvious…baggage she’s carrying that has rendered her odd and quiet, if not downright dependent, much of the time.

Dani’s turning this over in her mind, chewing on her bottom lip and gazing into a plastic cup of fountain soda when Jamie’s voice, tinged with panic, reaches her.

“Dani! Dani, can you hear me?”

Dani glances up, finds herself looking into very worried grey eyes.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, I was…I was thinking.”

“You were thinking?”

“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore-”

“No, no, it’s all good, just – _you_ , _you_ were thinking. Not…”

“OH, oh, yeah.” Dani affirms, finally grasping what Jamie’s clarifying and why she looks hopeful rather than annoyed as Dani would expect from someone who’s apparently been speaking to a brick wall for several minutes. “I was. I was just…in my own head there.” She doesn’t want to say more due to the content of those thoughts, doesn’t want to disclose her preoccupation with being unworthy of such amazing company, so she stops there, but nods again in what she hopes is a reassuring way.

“Well, that’s a lovely place to be, I’d wager,” Jamie says, gracing Dani with her sideways smile, a part-cocky _I just told a damn good joke_ , part-amused _Well would you look at that_ expression that makes Dani’s stomach flutter. It partially assuages Dani’s immediate worry about being a shitty travel companion, and causes her to blush, look down at her hands clasped in her lap.

“Yeah, yeah, it…it is I suppose. Most of the time. Anyway, what were you saying?”

“Oh, oh yeah. I was just, finished here,” Jamie proudly holds up her new cutoffs, which to Dani’s eye maybe ought to have retained a couple more inches of fabric, but she says nothing about it, “and wondering if we could talk about our next move?”

“Yeah, yeah of course.” Dani nods, relieved. This is a conversation they have nearly every day: where to next? They have the lightest indication of a plan – drive across the country, see the sights – but that leaves a _lot_ of leeway in the day-to-day, turn-by-turn navigation. 

“I was thinking…” Jamie begins, “this jaunt through the desert has been amazing. I couldn’t have imagined what it would be like, and I’m really glad we took this route. And I’m loving the stuff we find to do, that big ball of twine, the museums…”

Though Dani senses a _but_ coming full-speed ahead, she can’t help but jump in here – “Jamie, you can just say that you loved the vagina flowers. No one’s going to judge you.”

Jamie growls. She had indeed stood agog for nearly three hours at a Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective at a gallery the previous afternoon. And while she knew damn well she had a leg to stand on – she’s a fucking gardener for Christ’s sake, she’s allowed to appreciate art about fucking beautiful flowers – Dani’s teasing about the…innuendo of certain pieces had both flustered her and pleased her, and not just because it was yet another promising sign of Dani’s return to something resembling normalcy. 

“Okay, okay, Poppins, you’ve had your laughs about that. I won’t apologize for having an appreciation for one of the greatest artists of our time.” She sticks her nose in the air dramatically, then shakes her head, determined to get back to the task at hand.

“As I was saying, I’m really enjoying…all this. But” – Dani holds her breath, waiting to see how much this next bit is going to hurt, how many of her private fears are about to be affirmed – “I also think I could use…a bit of green? And not just on a canvas. Though the vagina flowers were lovely.”

Dani isn’t sure she’s ever felt a wave of relief so strong. “All you want…is to go to the woods? I thought you were going to say you need a break, from me, from…all this.” She gestures vaguely at herself, the maps spread on the table, the pile of second-hand clothes.

“What? Dani, no. Not at all. I’m having the time of my life here. It’s just…I need my dose of plants that don’t have stickers coming out of them from all angles, and I could use a break from this heat, new shorts or no.”

Dani nods her understanding, but now that she’s brushed up against the much scarier possibilities that could have followed that _but_ , she may as well say it all:

“Jamie, we can go wherever you like. I don’t know how much time we have, I mean, I have, so…yeah, anywhere. Anything.” She takes a deep, ragged breath, continues, “And, I just want you to know, that if you need that, a break I mean, I get it. I know this isn’t what you signed up for.” Dani’s voice breaks, nearly inaudibly but it’s there, and she purses her lips against a quiver, looks to the side, down again, anywhere but at Jamie.

“What do you mean?” Jamie’s voice is genuinely flummoxed. “This is…exactly what I signed up for.” She’s remembering interlocked pinkies and a beast in the jungle, a wordless _thank you_ to the promise of company with no strings attached.

“No, I mean…before…all that,” Dani says, not wanting to speak the words both because they still hurt to even think, and because though the restaurant isn’t packed, there are a good handful of other customers at nearby tables.

“Oh, I mean, yeah, before _all that_ ,” Jamie starts, doing her own glance at their surroundings before leaning forward and lowering her voice, “all I’d signed up for was at least two more months of sneaking into your room every other night.”

“Jamie!” Dani hisses, but the admonishment is so half-hearted it doesn’t even land as one, and Jamie’s smirk doesn’t move. Why should it? Dani’s blushing, her eyes wide in disbelief, smiling the biggest smile she has in nearly a month, even as she’s shaking her head. Dani finally manages to shoot Jamie a semi-stern glance as she’s shoveling their purchases back into their bags, gathering her purse and pushing herself out of the booth though Jamie’s burger is less than half eaten. “I can’t believe you, _inappropriate_.” She strides toward the door at top speed, but looks over her shoulder once with a grin to make sure Jamie’s following close behind. 

-

So, they turn their route northward, toward the great swaths of green on their maps that denote the national forests of northern New Mexico and Colorado.

On the road, as Dani watches the landscape morph from sand to rock to mountain crag, watches cacti and tumbleweeds give way to evergreen stands and rushing streams, she’s replaying recent events in her head – the sandstorm, Jamie’s distinctly _inappropriate_ comment and her reaction to it – and putting together several pieces of information in a slow but certain realization that goes like this: One, the evening ritual she shares with Jamie is the best part of her day. Her heartrate speeds up while she brushes her teeth, her hands shake as she lets down her hair, and she has to work to keep her breath slow and steady against Jamie’s back as they fall asleep. Two, this has become the _only_ time that Jamie touches her most days. Her hazy memories of being constantly soothed and steered by Jamie’s gentle, capable hands are unechoed now that she is clear-eyed 95% of the time. Three, and most importantly, this situation is not acceptable, she needs to figure out what to do about it. Because Dani doesn’t know how much time she has left. And she doesn’t want to waste it not being touched by Jamie.

Dani is also keenly aware that Jamie’s request of destinations hadn’t been just an off-hand whim but a true, deep need of hers, and resolves to be intentional about selecting stopping points that she knows will have plenty of trees. She also suggests that they make time for more outdoors activities at each destination, reasoning that just driving past nature won’t fill Jamie’s cup; she needs to touch and breathe and take her time exploring it.

And that’s how they end up nearly dying three days later as they slog up the side of a mountain near Durango. In their excitement about “exploring nature,” neither of them had accounted for factors such as the altitude, the fact that they’ve been essentially sedentary for a month, their lack of proper footwear.

They’d set off on this ill-conceived jaunt from their lodge – so-called by the National Parks Service brochure, but in actuality more of a tiny, rustic cabin, which suits them fine – just after lunch, assured by the sign at the trailhead and a cheerful park ranger that it was a moderate-level hike of about three miles, which should take an hour, maybe two, round-trip. Fifteen minutes in they were already sweat-drenched, desperately huffing the thin air. By 3:30 Jamie is staring in dismay at the trail map the cheerful _lying_ park ranger had given them, comparing the elevation lines to what seems like miles and miles of direct uphill they’ve already completed, and yet the lookout point is nowhere to be found.

Finally, nearing 4 PM, Dani spots the blessed sign pointing to the overlook that is their destination, gestures wildly at it like a beacon. They stumble down the last stretch of path like drunkards, and when they break free of the treeline, Dani fairly collapses onto the stone outcropping in relief, while Jamie is so struck that she stays standing, drinking in the view with what can only be described as reverence.

The landscape stretching out below them is truly dazzling: the basin’s floor is a carpet of lush green dappled with patches of late-summer wildflowers in gold, scarlet, and royal purples, broken by thin, severe-looking pine trees clad in a full spectrum of greens deepening to black in the thicker patches. The entire valley is rimmed by a line of mountains so severe that the only word Jamie’s exhausted brain supplies is _crust_ – it’s a jagged, raw slice of the earth’s crust jutting improbably skyward. Here and there, deep blue glacial pools glimmer in the late afternoon sunlight, and though the calendar still reads September, there’s snow on the peaks.

Jamie’s eyes fill with tears at the pure, unadulterated beauty of it. There isn’t another person in sight aside from Dani; no roads or cars or buildings mar this landscape. It is, cliché or no, just as nature intended.

She looks over to see how Dani is doing, and is surprised to find Dani’s eyes trained not on the horizon, but back on her. Dani’s head is tilted, looking up at Jamie still standing next to her, and her lips are resting in a curious little pout, like she’s… _considering_ Jamie.

“Dani, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m great.” Dani gives a tiny shake of her head, runs her hand through her sweaty, tousled ponytail. “I mean, my feet are blistered all to hell and I thought my heart was going to burst back there, but this, this was worth it.” But she’s still not looking at the landscape, not making a gesturing sweep with her arm to indicate all of _this_ that was worth the hike. She’s just looking levelly at Jamie. Almost…expectantly.

“Yeah, sure was,” Jamie says agreeably, but a gnaw in her stomach is warning her that she’s not giving Dani what she’s asking for here.

As if in confirmation, Dani gives a tentative close-lipped smile, raises her eyebrows just a bit as if to say, _that all_?

Jamie doesn’t know what to do. Now it’s _her_ head that’s rushing, full of so much at once – the relief she’s been slowly letting herself feel now that Dani seems to be healing in earnest; the worry that a backslide could be right around the corner; the constant checking up on Dani that she doesn’t begrudge one bit, but is frankly exhausting; the swell of raw emotion this particular setting just freed in her chest. She doesn’t know what to do with all that at once, so she stands there, finally gives back a smile that she hopes says “All good, right?”

Dani gives her one more chance – she raises one hand up in Jamie’s direction, intends to tug her down to sit next to her, enjoy this stunning view _together_ together, start with that. Jamie takes the proffered hand, though, and pulls Dani in her direction – assuming that Dani wants help standing up to head back down the mountain since it’s so late. When Dani’s body is heavier than Jamie would have expected (because no, she’s not trying to get up; quite the opposite), Jamie again senses quite clearly that something’s not clicking between them, but still can’t parse it out in her current state. So, she does the worst thing: she ignores it. Says in a too-cheerful voice, “Best be heading down then, yeah? If we want to get back by dark?” and sets off down the path. 

-

An uncomfortable tenseness wells up between them as they gingerly descend the mountain, grows as they peel shoes off feet that are indeed heavily blistered, simmers as they heat up canned soup from their grocery stash over the cabin’s tiny two-burner stove and make toast under the broiler.

Jamie’s uncharacteristically afraid to ask Dani what’s going on, because there’s been so much lightness about her, and between them, and it’s been so sweet lately, that she doesn’t want to disturb it, hopes whatever’s storming behind Dani’s eyes is a little thing that will blow over with sleep.

But Dani isn’t waiting for Jamie to ask. She plunks their bowls of soup down on the rustic wooden table with a slosh, sits with a huff across from Jamie, who’s quickly escalated from uncomfortable-worried to downright terrified of what she’s about to hear. Will the voice that speaks to this anger belong to Dani, or to something else? Will Dani tell her she’s let her down, failed her, even after Jamie’s tried so hard? Jamie’s not sure she can bear either of those, and she steels herself for the worst.

“Jamie.” Dani opens by speaking her name, chin quivering. “What’s wrong?”

That…was not what Jamie had expected, at all. In fact, that’s what she should be asking Dani. For a long, heavy moment, she’s befuddled, wondering if she misheard, when Dani continues, “Why won’t you. Why don’t you…” She’s blinking back tears.

“What, Dani, why won’t I what?” Jamie is desperately confused and frantic to answer whatever not-so-terrifying question Dani’s trying to ask.

“Why won’t you _touch_ me?” Dani fairly shouts, and a wall of emotion crashes out with the words. Her face breaks open, full of confusion and far too much pain.

“Dani, oh, no, I…” Though she’s relieved, Jamie still isn’t fully caught up, isn’t sure what needs fixing. But she’s been given one big clue – Dani wants to be touched. So she reaches one hand across the table, covers Dani’s with it. “What do you mean? Tell me. Please, I’m listening.”

Dani swallows hard, gathering the courage, and the language, to continue. “We’re together, all the time, and we do all this amazing stuff, and I like that, but, it feels like the past couple of weeks, ever since I’ve been…better…it’s been…different.” Dani knows she’s not being very eloquent, but it’s all she can do to choke back the sobs that want to come loose and continue,

“And I thought, _maybe she’s tired, that would make sense, I could be OK with that_ – you’ve done, just, so much for me, Jamie, I can never thank you enough for it” – she’s on a roll now, eyebrows knitting together as she’s picking up speed, shaking her whole head so that blonde strands are falling from her ponytail as tears increasingly threaten to spill –

“Or maybe, I thought, _maybe she’s sick of me_. That would hurt, but I could understand, it’s a lot, I’ve been a lot,” Jamie desperately wants to stop her, assure her that no, never, not one bit, but she can sense that this avalanche needs to play itself all the way out, so instead she wordlessly brings her free hand up, places it on Dani’s shoulder so that she’s nearly hugging her over the table.

“But, but then, you say things, like, well, like you _said_ to me the other day, and it makes me think, maybe you still want…something else from me, _with me_ , but then, you…don’t _do_ anything about it. Am I doing something wrong? Is this not…what it was? Because that’s okay, I guess, it has to be, I just…need you to tell me, if that’s it.” Dani finishes, looking at Jamie through eyes that are finally now freely running with tears.

“Oh my god, Dani.” Jamie’s shoulders fall, and she lets out a heavy breath, relieved but also gearing up to address a huge miscommunication she’s let grow between them. Dani’s still looking at her like she’s on trial, waiting to be sentenced, so Jamie gives her the shortest, most important answer first: “Not sick of you. Not in the least. I do want something with you, Dani, I want…everything with you.” Dani’s face lightens just a bit, she blows a hard breath out of still-trembling lips and Jamie reaches a thumb up to wipe tears from a flushed cheek.

“Then why- what’s…”

Jamie interrupts now, has her own avalanche that needs to be loosed: “Look, here’s what it is: I pulled back when you were…before, because, well, obvious reasons really. Only a prat wouldn’t’ve. And since then I’ve been waiting because, well, because I want to do this properly.” Dani allows herself a small smile, which encourages Jamie as she continues, spilling words and thoughts and feelings she wasn’t really ready to share, but knows have to be.

“Because we are together, every day, and I want that to last. I’m not trying to coddle you, I for damn sure don’t want to get rid of you, Christ, no, I just – I can’t pretend I know what you’re feeling or what you’re going through, and I don’t want to mess this up. We don’t need to rush. I can be patient.”

At the last phrase, Dani’s face changes dramatically. Anger sparks there, her cheeks darken again, and she stands quickly, freeing herself of Jamie’s hands -

“Well I _can’t_ , Jamie! You’re right, you have no idea what I feel sometimes. It’s like – I’m perfectly here, I’m perfectly me, but there’s this…chance, this whisper, that it could all end tomorrow, it could all end _before_ tomorrow! And you…” her voice lowers to a growl, not because she’s angry _at_ Jamie but because with every fiber of ther being, she is furious at the unfairness of the fact of _this_ “…you promised me there’d be other nights, Jamie. I want my other nights! _With you!_ What nights I have left I want them…” the last words disappear into a sob, and Dani collapses back into the chair, falls her head into her hands and –

Jamie is up and at her side as she begins to weep in earnest; Jamie is kneeling on the floor and running her hands over Dani’s hair and down her back and arms and across her trembling thighs that shake as she stomps her feet in rage at what’s been taken from them.

When the wave recedes and Dani calms a bit, Jamie speaks again, softly into her ear, “Dani, I’m so sorry. I should have said something. I…I think I was waiting to make sure you were really okay, that you really were better. I felt _bad_ about what I said to you back in Santa Fe, it just kind of slipped out, but maybe that was…out of line for where you are right now.”

Dani at her now through wet eyelashes, shakes her head one hard shake. “I need you to trust me, Jamie. You have to treat me like I’m me, or I’ll stop believing it. Hell, I only started believing it in the first place because you told me so many times.” Jamie’s smile goes wavery with her own overwhelm, “So I need you to trust me when I tell you it’s okay, I’m me, I know what I want.” Her voice deepens and she pulls Jamie’s face up, presses their foreheads together with a hand that’s strong on the back of Jamie’s head, “And I want you as much as I ever have.” 

Jamie shudders, feeling herself open the door now to desires that she hadn’t consciously realized she’s been shutting out for too many weeks.

“And if all we have is tonight,” Dani continues, voice husky with crying but also with a low, deep hunger that won’t be denied any longer, “I want to have a fucking one night stand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Indigo Girls - History of Us (1989)
> 
> Opinions wanted: How would we feel if this morphed into not-so-canon compliant later on? Something is taking shape that I want to explore...
> 
> Thanks as always for reading and commenting - I get a ridiculous amount of joy from your messages.


	4. treat you right and love you kind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to upgrade the rating from M to E because I am apparently incapable of not writing these two as just pure unadulterated smut. Assume there'll be no complaints.

_“And if all we have is tonight,” Dani continues, voice husky with crying but also with a low, deep hunger that won’t be denied any longer, “I want to have a fucking one night stand.”_

-

In the split second after she hears those words, Jamie thinks that it’s a damn good thing she’s kneeling on the floor already, because if she’d been standing her legs would’ve given out beneath her. As it is, it’s really only Dani’s grip on the base of her skull that keeps her from melting into a puddle. Her mind is reeling, trying and failing to come up with the right thing to say next, but all she can do is take another ragged breath, breathing right into Dani’s mouth, and whisper, “Okay.”

Then Dani’s got her by the elbow, hauling her up closer, and Dani’s kissing her, Dani’s lips are crashing against her mouth and Dani’s tongue is parting her lips. Jamie tangles her hands into Dani’s hair, still caught in a ponytail rendered messy from their hike and their…fight?...and pulls Dani closer still, tilts her face and opens her mouth, letting Dani all the way in. With the first stroke of Dani’s tongue against her own, Jamie feels an unmistakable twinge deep in her abdomen, and just like she has _every single time_ this woman has kissed her before, she goes wet, immediately. It would be embarrassing if it weren’t so incredible, what Dani’s lips and teeth and _Christ_ , Dani’s tongue _do_ to Jamie.

That thought – combined with the still-sinking-in fact that here and now, at last, she can continue, can return to the things she’s dreamed of doing with, and to, Dani – gets Jamie up off her feet at last, gets her moving to have more contact with Dani’s body.

Dani matches her, standing, stepping into Jamie, wrapping her arms around shoulders, waist, one hand landing square in the middle of Jamie’s back to ensure there’s no airspace left between them after weeks of far too much. 

Jamie is holding onto the sides of Dani’s face, thumbs and forefingers bracketing Dani’s ears, intent on kissing an apology, an act of contrition, into Dani’s panting mouth. Jamie intends, eventually, to offer this prayer for penance over Dani’s entire body over the course of the next several hours – already she’s receiving flashes of inspiration about how she’ll lick a line slowly up Dani’s neck and around her jawline, how she’ll capture Dani’s earlobe between pouted lips.

But Dani isn’t here to grant absolution. Neither is she interested in withholding it. Dani started this conversation to address a situation that was unacceptable to her, to set the record straight on what she needs and what she wants. And now, Dani isn’t here to be worshipped. Dani is here to be _touched_.

In that spirit, Dani whips her own t-shirt so quickly up and over her head that she knocks Jamie’s hands clean away from their place at sides of her face. She brushes wayward hair back and off her own reddened cheeks before fisting her hands in the fabric of Jamie’s shirt, pulling it up and off in one swift motion, hands landing back down seamlessly on Jamie’s now-bare shoulders. They’re not still for long, though, palms passing quickly, desperately down Jamie’s arms, over Jamie’s stomach, around her back, across alert nipples showing plainly through the stretchy fabric of her sports bra.

Jamie’s doing her best to keep up, having had just one millisecond to adjust as she surrendered her shirt – _is this how we’re going to go_? – but she knows to follow Dani’s lead right now, and incidentally isn’t complaining one bit. So she shifts gears from deep kisses to hungry nips along Dani’s shoulders, a tongue sliding rough instead of soft up the column of Dani’s neck, teeth on the earlobes, hands everywhere she can reach.

When Dani starts tugging clumsily at the waistband of Jamie’s denim shorts, Jamie shucks them down, flicks them off her foot and right across the cabin’s floor before closing the gap between their bodies once again. She catches Dani behind one thigh, lifts, wraps Dani’s leg around her own waist, hitches her up. Finally, it seems, she’s managed to catch up to Dani’s pace, because Dani pauses, eye to eye with Jamie, and just…smiles. And somehow, Jamie thinks, it’s the smile of both someone who just finally got home and like someone who knows she’s about to get fucked.

Jamie’s moving again then, dropping to catch Dani’s lower lip between her teeth as she lets Dani’s leg drop – not confident she can pick her all the way _up_ – and settles for walking them back toward the bed that’s set against the far wall. 

When Dani feels the edge of the bed against the back of her knees, she lets herself collapse backwards onto the probably-antique quilt laid there, pulls Jamie down on top of her. Jamie’s finally matching her move-for-move, and the steadily-rising energy they’re building together is feeding Dani exactly what she’s been hungry for and only just worked out how to ask. Now Jamie’s sliding her hands under Dani’s thighs, lifting her legs so they wrap around Jamie’s waist and oh, fuck, yes, the way Jamie is handling Dani right now is pushing her higher faster than she anticipated. Dani bucks up just as Jamie is moving down, and the effect is a strike of friction harder than either had anticipated.

Dani whines, Jamie feels a growl growing at the back of her throat. When Jamie brings one hand up to stroke the side of her face, Dani catches it in her own, pushes it down between their bodies.

“Inside, please, I want you inside.” It’s like a switch has flipped, now that Dani’s asked for what she needs once, it’s easier to do it again, and again.

Jamie complies, skating her hand down Dani’s front quickly and slipping her fingers beneath both the elastic of Dani’s athletic shorts and her underwear at once. She circles just twice before sliding two fingers into Dani, intuiting that a slow start is neither necessary nor welcome.

“Oh God, Dani. Fuck.” Jamie’s looking directly down into her eyes, can’t conceal – and wouldn’t want to – how turned on she is by the ease with which she slides into hot arousal. Dani’s looking back, gripping Jamie’s shoulders to gain more momentum as she rides her fingers. “You feel so good.”

“Been – ah – wanting – ah – this,” Dani explains, completely unnecessarily, in time with her thrusts. 

“Can tell,” Jamie grins, squeezes her own thighs together to stave off her own ache.

“More,” Dani says simply, and now every out breath is growing from a pant to a moan.

“More fingers, harder, or faster?” Jamie doesn’t stop moving as she asks.

“Yes, all that,” Dani moans the words, dragging nails down Jamie’s back in anticipation as she says it.

This is a side of Dani Jamie hasn’t seen before now. Their first night together – their only night before this one – Dani hadn’t been timid, no, not at all, she’d been bold, had initiated – but, she’d been…new, still. New to Jamie and new to women. A little shy, looking to Jamie to take the lead once they’d reached a certain point. Trusting that Jamie would take her where she needed to go and give her what she wanted to feel. This, this total lack of inhibition, is different. For one truly horrible second as she’s adjusting the angle of her hand between Dani’s thighs, Jamie wonders if this change has anything to do with whatever – whomever – Dani is now carrying with her. Jamie banishes the thought in an instant, as much because she can’t bear it as that Dani has just asked for her trust. No, Jamie decides, wills it, this is Dani, just Dani, _my_ Dani (a little twinge in her stomach at _that_ ), who’s been ready for this and frustrated and growing stronger every day into her own true self even as she’s healing.

So it’s with no reservations that Jamie adds a third finger, roughens her pace, the back of her hand straining against wet cotton. The effect is immediate:

“Fuck, fuck, YES Jamie, Jamie YES,” Dani cries out, face open and helplessly high on pleasure.

“Oh, oh fuck, oh I’m _already_ – ” a strangled frustrated sound escapes Dani, and Jamie’s considerably more experienced ears know they’re hearing some regret at having moved quite so high so fast. She can’t stand the thought of Dani having even a single regret tonight, so she whispers, hot and dirty and conspiratorial into Dani’s ear, 

“Come for me fast this time. Owe you a few, I reckon.”

And with that, Dani lets go once again, lets her eyes screw shut as she comes undone around Jamie’s fingers, one loud deep animal scream pressing from within her as her whole body curls up off the bed and into Jamie. 

It isn’t until she’s ridden out the aftershocks, let her head fall back to the bed, is catching her breath that she realizes she’s been screaming – her throat is already scratchy from the effort. “Jamie, shit, I think that was loud.”

“You think?” Jamie’s grin is lopsided with amusement and arousal. “I’m just glad you picked the night we’re in a cabin instead of a motel room with neighbors to get me to ravage you,” she teases gently, but she’s sure, she thought of it already actually, was relieved to remember the park being nearly deserted. “Reckon you and I have this place nearly to ourselves, Poppins. Best spot ever for a one night stand.”

She’s joking, but she’s not, and Dani senses it. “Good, Jamie Taylor, because you just promised me a few more. And I have some things I’d like to do to you as well.”

Jamie feels a clench – she’s so turned on already from touching Dani, from knowing that Dani’s been wanting this, wanting _her_ , from feeling Dani fall apart around her hand. And now, _holy Christ_ , Dani is sitting up, retying her ponytail like she’s about to go to fucking work on Jamie.

Hair mostly tamed, Dani gives Jamie’s shoulder a gentle tug so that they end up lying facing one another. As hard as she’s throbbing, Jamie wants to look at Dani, to let herself see as well as touch this miraculous, disruptive, not-one-bit-boring _force_ that’s swept her old life away. So she holds back a few inches, eyes meeting Dani’s before roaming down the glistening, flushed skin of Dani’s chest, the soft curve of stomach.

“Can we take these off, do you think?” she asks, fingering the front of Dani’s bra, the waistband of her shorts. “Can’t be comfortable anymore, all wet,” she can’t help adding. Dani gives a little laugh.

“Mmm hmm, if you will too,” gesturing with her eyes at Jamie’s own remaining articles of clothing – bra and underwear.

“Seems fair,” Jamie’s voice is thick with desire, but still so Jamie – teasing and caring, familiar and safe – and Jamie smiles a broad smile as they finish undressing. Dani settles back in with her head pillowed on one crooked arm. She traces one finger across Jamie’s eyebrows, around her strong jaw, down her elegant neck, between her breasts, up to a sharp hip bone where she draws slow circles. Jamie, for her part, is still watching Dani, letting herself be touched.

After a few long, quiet moments, Dani cups her hand around Jamie’s top hip, pulls her closer. They move at the same time to rejoin their lips, and Dani smiles into the kiss. After days of feeling nearly nothing, and weeks of half-feeling everything, she finally feels as though she’s receiving a full signal. She’s overcome with a wave of intense gratitude that she gets to feel all this with _Jamie_ – Jamie, who is someone worth fighting through the fog for, who makes it worthwhile for Dani to figure out what’s bothering her about a situation, who makes it safe to ask for what she needs, who Dani can trust to hear her and respond.

So, when Dani at last moves to touch Jamie, really touch her, palming one breast while fisting a hand in her hair, it’s not with the same desperation with which she needed Jamie to touch her, but with a lower, slower burn of something very much like gratitude and something very much like love.

Jamie traces Dani’s lips with her tongue and moves to deepen the kiss as Dani’s hands roam across Jamie’s back, down her ribcage, back around her hipbone. When Dani brushes her fingers down Jamie’s thigh, Jamie can’t help but part her legs, ready. Dani giggles breathily into Jamie’s mouth, still kissing her, licks playfully against Jamie’s tongue with the tip of her own.

Dani brushes her knuckles across curled hair and presses her whole hand flat against Jamie, and Jamie grinds into her palm with a low moan. Dani gasps at how her fingers are already slipping across swollen skin, realizes just how worked up Jamie is. She dips one finger in to the first knuckle, and Jamie’s eyes close. Pushes in all the way with almost no resistance, and Jamie hisses. Gives her two more slow strokes before adding another finger, and Jamie says, “Dani, fuck,” and opens her eyes to watch Dani watching her.

And _god_ , the _sight_ of Dani, tongue curled against her bottom teeth in concentration, panting with every push into Jamie. Jamie brings her knee up and over Dani’s hip, shamelessly open for her, uses her leg to pull Dani in deeper and speed up the pace. Dani matches her, and her movement brings the heel of her hand up just near enough to Jamie’s clit to give a teasing hint of pressure. 

“Unh, that’s so good, oh shit, that’s so good, Dani, ohhh, don’t stop,” words and sounds and nonsense are spilling out of Jamie as her movements become irregular and shaky, and Dani feels herself start to moan her exhales. It’s the sound of Dani taking pleasure in fucking her that sends Jamie over the edge, and at the feeling of Jamie’s orgasm around her fingers, Dani growls right along with her.

As she’s learned from Jamie, Dani keeps her hand in place until Jamie touches her wrist. The fingers she withdraws are dripping and sticky, and without thinking much about it, she brings them to her mouth, takes both onto her tongue. It’s like nothing she’s ever tasted, and it’s like nothing she’s ever done before, and she knows that it’s a gateway to something she’s been scared of and fascinated by and will almost definitely be doing soon.

In the meantime, Jamie thinks she might die at the sight of Dani licking her fingers clean. She wants to say something, but her brain seems broken for the moment, so she stares, eyes wide, mouth agape.

“Did you do that fast to make me feel better?” Dani asks, oblivious to the fact that she's causing Jamie's death by pleasure.

Jamie can’t help but laugh, loud, tossing her curls back and shaking her head, an amazed smile playing across her face. “Oh, no, I certainly did not, Poppins. That was all you.” She leans in, kisses Dani, gets just the tiniest taste of herself off Dani’s lips, nearly dies again.

Intent on making good on her earlier promise, Jamie rolls Dani to her back, straddles her and grins, “But I’m about to make us both feel better.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Indigo Girls - Free in You (2004)
> 
> If you're on tumblr, come give me a shout @bly-me


	5. collecting you

When Dani’s eyes flutter open the next morning, the first thing she registers is _cold_. Every part of her except the front of her body, where she’s pressed into Jamie as usual, is freezing. The second thing she realizes is that _unlike_ usual, there aren’t two-plus layers of fabric between them – she’s pressed skin-to-skin against Jamie, who is shivering slightly, whose rhythmic still-asleep breaths press her spine ever so slightly into Dani’s chest. The slowness of sleep clears then as Dani remembers, in a rush of vivid detail, the events of the previous day and night.

For one delicious moment Dani floats in mild disbelief at the revelation, before her body makes her aware of two additional facts: she is starving, and she is sore. Stretching tentatively, Dani finds that her the muscles of her legs are tight and stiff, and _holy wow_ , her feet are truly killing her – that hike in subpar tennis shoes has done a number she’s not ready to fully deal with yet. She’s also tender in places she hasn’t been ever before, most notably the insides of her thighs and the sensitive skin between are aching in a way that isn’t exactly pleasurable, but that she wouldn’t hasten away, if only for the knowledge of what put them there.

At the thought, Dani tucks her head under the covers to nuzzle into Jamie’s back, and Jamie starts awake with an “Oi! What’s that now?!” Too late, Dani realizes that the tip of her nose must feel like ice between Jamie’s shoulder blades. She giggles, kisses the spot and ghosts warm breath across it to correct the mistake.

“Morning,” she smiles the word into Jamie’s skin. 

“How long did we sleep, two months? Is it winter now?” Jamie asks, her voice still groggy and more than a little grumpy, yet all the more adorable for it, in Dani’s opinion.

“Got cold,” Dani agrees, feeling none of Jamie’s annoyance, just languid, lazy morning-after-a-great-night easiness. She slides her arms all the way around Jamie, presses another kiss to the scarred skin of her shoulder, another still high on her cheek. “Let’s go to breakfast,” she says, still smiling like an idiot and not caring one bit.

Jamie’s finally coming into herself now, looks over her shoulder and takes in the sight of Dani, so much more skin than she’s become accustomed to, hair mussed in a distinct post-sex way that makes Jamie flush as she rolls to face her. “Mmm, all right, Poppins, yeah, but listen,” she’s faux-serious lips held in a stern little pout, and Dani rearranges her expression to be faux-serious as well, “we _must_ shower first. Think we’d scandalize the locals, walk in like this.”

Dani blushes, realizing she really must look a mess, and – what was it her college friends would say? – _smell like sex_. She’d hated when they’d said that, laughing merrily over dining hall food on a Friday morning; she’d wrinkled her nose and held back a gag, couldn’t imagine anything much worse. Now, she realizes, it’s all in who you’ve gotten that way with. Nevertheless, she concedes that it’s very much _not_ an appropriate way to go to a restaurant anywhere, least of all a town in rural Colorado.

This then-to-now contrast is one of a pair: the other is that she doesn’t feel any shame about any part of the previous night. If she tries to picture her younger self telling Eddie to go _harder, faster_ , any of the filthy things that had flowed freely out of her mouth last night – and first of all, perish the thought, because she didn’t even like to think about sex with Eddie when it had been a regular fixture of her life, much less now. But if she had, if she had dared, ask for what she really wanted on the rare occasions when she wanted it like _that_ , she knows it would have left her mortified for having stepped out of her carefully crafted character. 

So it’s into the shower, but “Quick, please, hungry” Dani urges, playfully using the need to hurry as an excuse to cram both of them into the tiny square stall at once. The water pressure is predictably shit, but the temperature is surprisingly hot, at least for the first 10 minutes, and they spend them rapidly soaping up and then slowly learning how to kiss in what feels like warm rain. When the water goes cold, they stumble out, dry off with thin towels. Jamie starts tugging Dani toward the bed again, but Dani stops her reluctantly.

“No, no, no, I mean, yes but…I actually do need to eat. Fuck going out, what do we have left here?” She’s willing to subsist on crackers and peanut butter for the day at this point if it means letting Jamie complete her mission to get her back in bed before she’s ever dressed.

Jamie, poking hopefully through their designated food bags, frown. “Erm, not much unfortunately. Think we need a resupply run.”

“Ugh,” Dani, who had been ready to jump in the car and speed to the nearest pancake house, is now regretting ever having thought of food.

“We’ll make it quick, promise,” Jamie says, grinning at Dani’s obvious regret at having to abandon their sanctuary for now.

-

As Jamie steers the rental around the curves out of the national forest lands and toward the nearest tiny town, Dani says thoughtfully, “Jamie. What if we didn’t make it quick?”

“Excuse me?” Jamie asks, genuinely confused. “Unless you’re talking about what we’re going to do when we get back later…why on earth wouldn’t we want to get a move on?”

“I mean,” Dani explains, sliding her hand onto Jamie’s thigh, “what if we stayed here a few days? It’s nice, it’s private, and now it’s…special.” She’s looking a bit shyly over at Jamie through a curtain of still-wet hair that she’s been fanning in front of the heat vents as a makeshift dryer.

“Yeah, yeah that sounds nice,” Jamie replies cautiously, because it sounds like _heaven_ , but up until this point Dani’s been insistent on keeping moving. “You think…you think it’s okay to slow down our itinerary a bit?”

Dani sighs, knowing immediately what Jamie’s referencing. She’s just getting out from under the feeling that she has to keep running at all costs, that she might be able to _get_ _away_ from the thing inside her. But now that feeling has _shifted_ somehow. She draws a deep breath, then struggles to explain to a concerned Jamie, “It’s like…I know I can’t get away from her now. I invited her in. She’s…she’s here. But she’s been getting quieter and quieter – you know that, I’m so much better – and now, I can’t explain it but…I haven’t heard a sound that I shouldn’t’ve since lunch yesterday. I know she’s not going anywhere, and I still don’t know how long I have, but, it feels…different, now.” She looks at Jamie hopefully, praying that her inadequate explanation – because really, there just aren’t words for this – does more to soothe than to further frighten this person she cares for so deeply.

And Jamie says the best thing then: “Okay.” She believes her, she doesn’t try to talk Dani out of it, or second-guess Dani’s assessment of her own situation. She just smiles, covers Dani’s hand with her own, and takes them around the next breathtaking bend toward town.

-

“Town” turns out to be a small but adequate main street anchored by a small grocery store at one end and a bustling greasy-spoon breakfast joint – their obvious first stop – at the other. Having decided to stay a few more nights, they feel less rushed to get back to the cabin, and instead take their time walking between the handful of shops and picking up supplies – a used book for Jamie, who’s been cycling through tattered cover volumes and is running low on material; a packet of moleskin to pad the blisters blooming on their feet from the worst-best hike in history. 

Jamie marvels at how the tone of their daily activities has shifted in the short time they’ve been on the road. Not two weeks ago, just picking up groceries felt like an inconvenience, something to be tackled quickly and efficiently so that less daylight driving time would be lost on the way to the next destination. Today, though, they shop with something approaching joy, strolling down the yellow-lit aisles of the small-town store at a leisurely pace, walking as close together as they dare in a public place and piling all manner of snacks, comfort food, and several bottles of red wine – Dani having dubbed all of this “cabin food” – into their cart.

When they arrive back at the lodges and report to the ranger on duty that they’ll be extending their stay, he cheerfully replies that he’ll drop some firewood by their cabin – the sudden temperature drop is expected to last for a few days, and the historic cabins, while sturdy, aren’t particularly well-insulated. 

The prospect of several cozy days spent together, truly together, snuggled by the fire working their way through a hefty stock of “cabin food” is enough to plaster goofy smiles on both their faces as they set about unloading the car and settling in. When the promised firewood arrives on their cabin’s porch, Jamie immediately gets to work bringing the bulk of it inside. 

Dani, perched on the scratchy plaid couch, watches with admiration as Jamie, kneeling, snaps twigs, crafts a little crosshatch of them in the grate, nestles newspaper in the middle, lights it. She adds kindling as the flame leaps, finally settling two logs on top when the blaze is strong enough. _Of course Jamie knows how to build a fire_ , Dani thinks.

Girl Scouts was one of the things to which Dani’s mother had said repeated _no_ s, even though it was one of the few things that Dani had persisted in asking for. But even when Edmund’s mother Judy had advocated for it – _think of the life skills, Karen_ – Karen had doubled down – _I am_ not _paying money for my daughter to wear an ugly outfit while learning to be a tomboy!_ So Dani had had to listen jealously as Eddie described what he was learning in Boy Scouts, what the camporees and bonfires were like.

But she doesn’t feel jealous of Jamie now, just…in awe of her calm capable movements, the ease with which she urges light into the cold logs with a well-aimed breath. _Kinda like she does to me_ , Dani muses, staring mesmerized at the flames. She reflects that when she met Jamie, she hadn’t been at rock bottom, not anymore, but she was far from _good_ – she was tense, afraid, guilty, and trying hard to avoid feeling any of those things; she had been as stiff and cold as those logs from operating with deadened nerve endings for so long that it felt like a survival tactic rather than the stumbling block it was.

“Penny for your thoughts, Poppins?” Jamie asks softly as she settles in next to Dani.

“I was thinking about fire…and you…and how, how much I’ve changed since I’ve known you,” Dani says, turning to face Jamie. “You know, the last time we sat in front of a fire together was the first night we kissed, and” Dani takes Jamie’s hands and squeezes, wants her to feel this, “and it was so _good,_ it was like…waking up. And then not a minute later, I was sure I’d lost you forever already, and I couldn’t stand that.” She shakes her head hard, banishing the memory of the pain, the disdain in Jamie’s eyes as she’d walked out of the greenhouse and left Dani there with her ghost.

“But then,” Jamie picks up the thread of the story, eager to steer it to happier points, to chase away the sadness clouding Dani’s eyes. “Then you didn’t lose me. Wouldn’t let me be lost. You came and found me and threatened me with coffee as soon as you were ready.”

“I mean, I really thought was ready before, but it turns out I had to take care of something once and for all.”

Jamie stays silent, but gives an _I’m interested and listening, please continue if you want_ look with her eyes, deep grey in this light, and rubs small circles on the backs of Dani’s hands with her thumbs. So Dani tells her about the rest of that night, how as Jamie was navigating the bumpy road back to Bly with a drunk and distraught Owen in the passenger seat, Dani returned to the remnants of the bonfire to parley with her demon. How, dressed for battle in a blue nightgown and armed with a bottle of well-aged wine and the memory of Jamie’s lips on hers, Dani had finally looked unflinchingly at the guilt and shame that assumed Eddie’s spectral form and let the feelings come at last, so that they would go.

Jamie had assumed Dani had taken some time to get her head on straight, maybe done some journaling, on those few days she took away from the Manor – and the revelation of the true nature of Dani’s shift leaves her in awe of Dani, yes, always, but also incredibly cocky at her own apparent role. “So, let me get this straight, Poppins. You carry this bloke around with you, seeing him in car windows, coverin’ up mirrors for _months_ , but one kiss with me and it’s into the fire with ya, Eddie, mate, bugger off?!”

“Oh-kay, you, it’s not that simple; for starters, I remember two kisses,” Dani starts, holding up two fingers to illustrate the point, but stops when she realizes that really, it _was_ that simple. She had accepted her fate as a woman haunted by the guilt of feelings concealed too long, of a hard decision made too late, had written it off as the terrible price of her freedom, right up until a reason came along that was stronger than that albatross.

That sweet, simple, enormous realization makes her lean into the Jamie that’s here now, catch Jamie’s lower lip between her own, suck gently before pulling back to say, “Actually, you’re right. That’s exactly how it was.”

Jamie looks surprised but doesn’t argue, just takes the weight of this confirmation and puts it into returning Dani’s kiss, cupping her hands around Dani’s face like it’s a precious thing – _it is_ – and leaning in closer to her body. When their lips make contact this time, they’re both smiling, and their teeth bump together gently amid messy, happy kisses. 

The mood has shifted from the morning’s reluctant-to-leave-bed, lusty heat. Now, just hours later (hours within which, either would have told you this morning, would have seen them naked and biting down screams on the floor by now), they’re comfortable to take their time. Physically, they’ve been fed, blisters treated, cozy comfy clothes donned, fire blazing, relieved to be settled in place for longer than they have been since London – and emotionally, each feels a steadying of the ship: _this_ is how they’re supposed to be together. There are still problems, insurmountable ones if they think too hard about them, but those will be there later, when the fire isn’t so warm, when they’re not sitting with their whole bodies angled toward each other, knees pressed together under a blanket and forehead-to-forehead, breathing in tandem and just taking in one another’s peaceful presence, assured that whatever is to come, they’ll face it just this way.

Dani runs one hand up under Jamie’s sweater, pulls her in even closer with a warm palm on her spine, buries her nose into Jamie’s auburn curls and draws in a deep breath. “Have I told you how much I like the way you smell?”

Jamie furrows her brows. “Didn’t know I had a smell. Don’t wear perfume. Are you sure it’s me you’re smelling?”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure,” Dani says, nodding against Jamie’s forehead, causing Jamie to echo the movement. “Noticed it the first time you got close enough to me – on the sofa that night it must have been.”

“Huh. Well, it’s a good smell then?” Jamie is genuinely curious. “What’s it smell _like_?”

“Oh, let’s see. Warm earth.” Dani presses a nearly-chaste kiss to Jamie’s cheek. Pauses to think. “Sunlight on stone.” Another, to the corner of Jamie’s mouth. “Rain clouds about to let loose.” Another to the other corner. “Little bit of old book pages in there too.” This time, she kisses Jamie properly square on the mouth, brushing her tongue across Jamie’s full lower lip. Jamie sighs and parts her lips, pulling Dani in deep.

Jamie’s hands find Dani’s shoulders, anchor there for a moment, then travel down and land on the zipper of Dani’s sweatshirt. She tugs the zipper down inch by inch as she lands kisses along Dani’s jawline, her earlobe, her neck. When she finds a ticklish spot and Dani giggles, throws her head back, Jamie can’t help but laugh herself, forcing her to interrupt her ministrations temporarily.

In the meantime, Jamie’s hands have made their way down Dani’s chest and have burrowed under the blanket across their laps. “Mmm, been meaning to ask you,” she says, stroking Dani’s leg under the blanket, “about your thighs.” 

Dani, raised by weight-conscious women for whom _thigh_ was a bad word unless referring to poultry, goes on autopilot right to affronted, snaps back a few inches. “What about them?”

“They’re bloody strong, that’s what!” She knocks a loose fist against Dani’s quads. “Did you get these muscles just from chasing kids around at top speed, or are you a secret weightlifter?”

Now Dani feels nothing but pleased. As a conventionally pretty girl whose number one goal in life up until recently was to fit in, Dani has received endless compliments on her hair, her skin, her “figure,” and how generally “beautiful” she is – but it isn’t often that someone recognizes her body for more than the way it looks, and she appreciates this different type of attention. “I ran track in high school,” she states proudly.

“Ah, there it is,” Jamie smiles and nods, approving. “And what events did we run, then?”

As Dani is telling Jamie about being a middle-distance runner, Jamie is continuing to lavish appreciation on Dani’s thighs with her palms, skating them softly up and down the toned length of them, sliding the soft terry fabric of Dani’s sweatpants along with them. Eventually, the contact and heat of Jamie’s hands builds to a point that makes Dani stop her storytelling and hum in pleasure, grinning at the way Jamie is slowly, so slowly expanding her path up to Dani’s hips, across the waistband of her pants.

They continue this way for a long time, talking like they’re catching up after a time apart, which in a way, they are, and all the while, letting hands roam slowly but unrestrained over clothes, under clothes, across skin made warm by the fire and by each other’s company.

Jamie’s describes the library in her hometown, telling Dani about the overstuffed chairs and shelves of alternate lives that were her refuge, while she wraps her hands around either side of Dani’s waist under layers of clothing, walks fingers along hipbones, reaches all the way up to trace collarbones, rucking Dani’s shirt and sweater up in the process.

Dani is recounting a laugh-out-loud story of the most disastrous Halloween of her teen years, drawing out Jamie’s dimples in a goofy grin even as she’s drawing hitched breaths of pleasure with the way her fingers are tracing the front seam of Jamie’s pajamas.

By the time they’re trading most embarrassing moments, the majority of their clothing has been shed, and they’re both struggling to keep the thread of the conversation. They’ve gradually shifted their bodies so that they’re turned fully toward each other on the small couch, Jamie’s legs stretched out to either side of Dani, Dani’s legs resting over Jamie’s thighs so that she’s not quite in her lap, but the space between them is small.

It’s Dani who breaches the unspoken rules of their game first, and it’s an accident. While listening to Jamie tell about how she attended her first job interview with her shirt on backwards, Dani is toying with the edge of Jamie’s underwear between her thighs. She’s pressing along the elastic in a tantalizing line of fingerprints that Jamie swears will be burned into her skin. At the next spot, just to one side of Jamie’s core, the cotton of Jamie’s underwear can’t hold up to both Dani’s touch and the swollen, wet skin beneath, and it slips to the side so that Dani’s finger slides in an instant onto Jamie, and then _into_ Jamie, before she can change course.

Jamie’s eyes, which had been fluttering closed at the tease, fly open, surprised but pleasantly so. She gasps, and while a part of her wants to tease Dani for giving in first, all of a sudden she feels that there’s no way she could have waited longer to be touched, and to touch Dani in return. “Fuck,” she whispers, grinning around the word, as she hastens one hand down to reciprocate, finds Dani just as hot and slick as she knows she herself is.

The space between them is tight, just enough room to set a rhythm of jerky but synchronized thrusts that make Dani’s head spin with the realization that she’s doing to Jamie exactly what Jamie is doing to her, and they’re feeling it all, together. She squeezes her eyes shut, panting and whining, nearly overcome with pleasure. Jamie’s swallowing Dani’s moans, all the while leaning into her so that their noses, mouths, arms, legs are pressed together, as close as two people can be.

When she feels Dani start to tighten around her fingers, Jamie says, “Wait for me, if you can.”

Dani moans, knowing what Jamie’s angling at, wanting that next level of intimacy that Jamie’s proposing but not knowing whether she can slow herself down. She takes a deep breath to anchor herself, stave off the edge for just a bit longer. She opens her eyes, thinking that will ground her further, but instead is met with the image of Jamie, tongue pressed to the bud in the middle of her upper lip as her hand trails down to her own clit, starts to frantically circle there to catch Dani.

“Fuck Jamie, I’m trying. I’m trying, I’m trying.” She repeats the word until it becomes nonsense, a ragged sound she’s making in an effort to concentrate on anything except how badly she wants to let go. Watching Jamie touch herself, while touching Dani, who’s touching Jamie, is so _much_ that she starts to see stars, forces herself to open-mouth pant instead of moaning, which feels too good.

Jamie, fingers sliding directly over hard, hyper-aroused nerves, is starting to tremble, feeling her own muscles contracting in anticipation. Every sound Dani makes as she’s holding herself back is pushing Jamie closer, and when she’s finally nearly there, she can barely speak.

“Dani, I’m close, I’m gonna -”

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, can I, Jamie, can I, I’m there, I have to – ”

Jamie can only nod furiously – and unnecessarily – as she comes apart into Dani’s hand, fireworks exploding behind her eyes as she feels – and hears – Dani do the same.

They stay sitting that way for long minutes, heads slumped on each other’s shoulders, sweat-damp hair falling down backs, hands limp and useless by their sides, catching breaths as heartrates recover.

They only move when Dani realizes how low the fire has gotten, asks Jamie to show her how to build it back up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with this chapter. There's a lot of plot in the works that's been keeping me busy mapping things out. Also, didn't edit this one as rigorously as usual, so there are likely errors that will get corrected in the next few days, but I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer. 
> 
> As always, your comments are my favorite thing. Hand to goddess, I work faster when I'm interacting with y'all, so drop a line. 
> 
> Also, I wrote this note in a quick draft a couple of weeks ago, but then it didn’t fit the tone of this chapter at all, but I thought you all would appreciate the lighter side anyway, so sharing here - with regard to Jamie just learning the details of Dani banishing Eddie after the bonfire:  
> (In normal circumstances, this would have been discussed by now, but Dani, bless her, has had another ghost on her mind too much lately to return to talks of the last one.) 
> 
> Chapter title from Indigo Girls - Collecting You (2004)


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